Bombing Outside Madrid Airport Injures 3

A car bomb exploded in a parking lot at Madrid's glittery new airport terminal on Saturday, following a warning call from the Basque separatist group ETA, officials said. Three people were slightly wounded.

The blast halted all air traffic on one of the year's busiest travel days, and brought a fiery end to an nine-month-old ETA cease-fire that had spurred the greatest hopes in a decade of a peaceful end to the conflict.

The timing of the blast — just hours after the execution in Baghdad of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — caused initial fears that Islamic militants might be involved. But officials soon discounted that, saying that two warning calls were received in the Basque region just before the explosion.

In the second call, a man speaking in Spanish claimed responsibility for the separatists, the Basque Interior Department's emergency rescue services said.

The bomb exploded at about 9:30 a.m. at the airport's new Terminal Four, said Javier Ayuso, a spokesman for the emergency rescue services of the Madrid city government.